The appeal of Butler is like the appeal of marathon running: everyone likes having done it, but few people actually like doing it.[/size]In that sense, it’s obviously completely antithetical to Peter’s and Mackenzie’s ideal course, yet just as obviously it is a great course: as somebody who’s caddied at Butler National, I’d find it pretty hard to say that it’s been “pushed aside,” since as the members like to say it could have a U.S. Open tomorrow (well, maybe not in February), and it’s pretty hard to argue with them. At least in Chicago, I doubt if you could find tougher (I’d say Medinah is as hard, but that might be biased.) But the larger point that Mr. Doak makes is more serious: which is that courses like Butler are fragile, or brittle. The membership belongs there just so long as Butler has the reputation of being one of the toughest courses—as soon as some other course comes along that’s by consensus harder, Butler will become passé. That seems to me an excellent argument as to why Butler is not a good goal. Ridiculously hard, absurdly expensive, and not really that fun to play (unless you’re a tour pro on a good day) is just not a very good plan. What I think is interesting about the point however is that it’s courses that are—in terms of another discussion going on at the moment—the “proportionate,” or Crane-style courses that are most fragile, while it’s the “disproportionate,” or Mackenzie/Doak courses that could be considered the most “robust”: it suggests that because “disproportionate” courses have more interest to their players, that could be one reason why they could be considered to have more “survival chances.”And that suggests an empirical investigation: given the kind of “extinction event” golf courses have been going through in the past eight years or so in this market, have more “proportionate” or “disproportionate” courses survived? Mr. Doak implicitly predicts that “disproportionate” courses would survive at a higher rate; that’s a question that might actually have an answer. Joe